Still no reply, and I began to be startled there in that intense darkness where it took so little to excite one’s imagination. Had he after all been seriously hurt by the bear, and now sunk into a state of insensibility?
“Esau!” I whispered again, but still there was no reply; so half rising I reached over to touch his face, which was comfortably warm, and I heard now his regular hard breathing. For a few minutes I could not feel satisfied, but by degrees I grew convinced Esau was sleeping heavily, and at last I lay down too, and dropped off soundly asleep as he. How long I had been in the land of dreams I did not know till next day, when I found from Gunson that it must have been about a couple of hours, and then I awoke with a start, and the idea that the bear had come back and seized me, till the voice of our companion bidding me get up relieved me of that dread.
“What is the matter?”
“Look,” he cried.
I was already looking at a blaze of light, and listening to a fierce crackling noise. There before me was one of the great pine-trees with the lower part burning, and clouds of smoke rolling up. “But how—what was it set it on fire?”
“Ask Quong,” said Gunson gruffly, as he stood by me with the glow from the fire lighting him up from top to toe, and bringing the trees and rocks about us into view.
“Me only put fire light when bear go, leady for make water velly hot,” said the little Chinaman, dolefully; “fire lun along and set alight.”
“Yes, you couldn’t help it,” said Gunson. “The dry fir-needles must have caught, and gone on smouldering till they reached a branch which touched the ground, and then the fire ran along it like a flash.”
“But can’t we put it out?” I cried, excitedly, as the boughs of the huge green pyramid began to catch one after the other.
“Put it out!” he said, with a half laugh. “Yes; send Dean there for the nearest fire-engine. There’s plenty of water. I did try at first while you were asleep, and burned myself.”